Liz's Friday Presentation

A Lost Tooth

Dominique’s mouth was open her head angled back to better reveal the black hole where, minutes before, the tooth had nestled securely in a pocket of pink gum. Blood mixed with saliva and stained the surrounding teeth and lower lip a deep red. She sobbed in long extended wheezes keeping her eyes squeezed shut, cheeks wet with tears, “Ms. Kengeter [sob sob] Rashaad knocked my tooth out.”

A small group of children stood behind Dominique. A few of them had witnessed the crime and shouted out various verdicts. It was just an accident! It was Rashaad’s fault! Dominique started it! The rest of those gathered had been attracted by Dominique’s noisy sobs, drawn to drama of any sort like buzzards to a carcass.

Stay calm stay calm stay calm I thought.

I was in my first year as a first grade teacher at South Warren Elementary school. It was recess, that sacred twenty minute block of freedom that brings temporary relief from the oppression of pencils and hand-raising. When I was a student, my elementary school used a system of colored flags to indicate where recess would be held that day. A red flag meant it was too cold or wet to be outside and recess would be held indoors. A white flag signaled that the grass was too damp or there was snow on the ground and outdoor play was confined to the blacktop. A green flag meant we had access to the grass and therefore could use the playground or sport fields.

This type of organizational system did not exist at South Warren. Teachers just looked outside their windows. If it was raining the class stayed in; if it wasn’t, the class went out. Today was sunny and so the class was outside. Usually two classes were scheduled to use the playground at a time in order to avoid over crowding. However, the other first grade teacher didn’t like our time block, and since no one in the administration really cared what the teachers did, she took them outside at her leisure. Thus, every day my class had the playground to themselves.

It was a relatively new playground, purchased and installed after years of fundraising by the parents. This was a considerable achievement as 95% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch and many of the families didn’t even own a car. Although we had the lowest test scores in the county, the smallest student body, and outdated facilities, our playground was beautiful.

The school sat near the edge of the woods. A dirt driveway formed a U-shape in front of the building and connected it to a small paved road. There wasn’t a soccer field or a tee-ball diamond since South Warren did not have any sports teams. There was a nice lawn behind the school but my first graders preferred to stay within the boundaries of the wood chipped playground.

Play time had commenced as usual. Students broke off into small groups some ran straight to the playground equipment, while others began their latest favorite game, cops. From what I could gather this was kind of like tag but with multiple chasers. When you were caught you were pushed up against playground equipment and frisked. The innocent were let free and the guilty hauled off to jail, only to escape later.

Dominique had run over with her mouth open and eyes shut. I wondered how she could see and was concerned she would run into the playground equipment, it had happened before. Now she stood before me with her mouth open and bloody. “Miss Kengeter,” she wheezed again, “Rashaad knocked my tooth out.” She pulled back her upper lip and sure enough there was a gaping hole.

Ok, I thought. Stay calm. “Dominique, where is the tooth?”

“I don’t know,” she cried.

Rashaad poked his head through the gathering crowd of onlookers. “It was an accident Ms. Kengeter,” he said in his small slow voice. “We were just playing.”

I would figure that out later. “Dominique, was your tooth already loose?”

“No,” she cried.

Okay, I was getting nervous. “Dominique. This is important, was it a big tooth or a baby tooth?”

“It was a big one,” she cried.

Oh shit. My attempt to remain calm vaporized, lunch turned to lead in my stomach, and full on panic set in. Mouth injuries, particularly those involving teeth make me incredibly squeamish. I had pulled very few of my own baby teeth. Apparently, the size of my adult teeth were considerably larger than the space I had in my mouth so whenever an incoming tooth showed up on an X-ray at the dentist, they put on the “snoopy nose”, a small black cup that fit loosely over my nose and administered nitrous oxide. In my hazy dream-like state I watched the dentist through the reflection of his glasses up until the moment of tooth removal. But even though I shut my eyes, I can still remember the crack of my own teeth as they were uprooted. Later, when it was time to go home, a nurse would hand me a small plastic treasure chest. Inside would be between one and four baby teeth resting on a small cotton ball pillow.

Since then my worst nightmares have involved my teeth becoming loose and falling out. In the dreams I try to stuff them back in their notches but they won’t stay. Once I heard a report on NPR about methamphetamine addicts. One of the side effects is that your teeth become soft like the consistency of cantaloupe. I had to turn the radio off.

If Dominique had lost an adult tooth we had to find it immediately. My nightmares about tooth loss had actually prompted me to ask my dentist what to do if I ever lost a tooth, so I knew once we found it we first needed to clean it then try and stick it back up in the gum. If it wouldn’t fit we needed to get it into a glass of milk. But first we needed the tooth.

Unfortunately, South Warren only had a nurse in the building on Friday afternoons, and it was not a Friday. I grabbed the kid closest to me.

“Laquan, run inside and get Ms. Munn. Tell her Ms. Kengeter has an emergency on the playground.” He started to walk back to the building.

“Run Laquan” I yelled and turned back to the students.

“EVERYBODY STOP!!” I must have really sounded panicked because everybody actually stopped. “This is an emergency, come over here immediately.” I am sure they sensed that my anxiety was escalating exponentially because they froze and quickly gathered around me.

“Dominique has lost her tooth. We have to find it and we have to find it fast! It is somewhere in the woodchips. It is probably lying on top so we need to be careful that we don’t dig around or kick the chips. “

“Will we get a prize?” someone asked.

“Definitely,” I said, desperate for any kind of incentive that might lead one of the six year olds to find the tooth.

That got everyone excited, including Dominique whose crying lessened and started the hunt with her classmates for her own tooth.

“What does it look like?” someone shouted.

“It’s a tooth guys, it looks like a tooth.”

“What color is it?”

Oh my god, seriously? “It’s a tooth! It is white.”

I turned to see three boys, legs spread and bent over digging ferociously in the woodchips like dogs, bits of wood flying through their legs and hitting the other kids.

“Hey!” I shouted. “I said no digging! Just look at the surface of the ground.”

Where was Laquan? All he needed to do was walk to the first classroom in the building.

I looked back at the school and there he was, meandering across the grass and looking at something on his arm. I ran over to him. “Where is Ms Munn I asked?”

“Well,” said Laquan slowly, “I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do.”

Breathe Liz. Breathe.

“Ashe,” I shouted out to one of the more reliable students. “Go inside and get the first teacher you see. Tell them Ms. Kengeter has an emergency. Run!”

He dutifully took off and was back two minutes later with Ms. Munn. They strolled over to the playground where kids and I were on our hands and knees sifting through the woodchips.

On the verge of hysterics, I explained the situation and she called Dominique over. She took one look and said, “Oh that’s just a baby tooth Ms. Kengeter. Nothing to worry about. See how there aren’t any holes for the roots? She’s fine.”

Oh.

The children went back to playing.

In one sentence she had pushed back the waves of stress and guilt about to crush me. But surprisingly this release was followed by an intense flood of emotion. First I thought I might start laughing at the utter chaos that had just occurred. Then I felt annoyed that Dominique told me it was a big tooth. I was frustrated with Ms. Munn for casually dismissing my anxiety and Dominique’s injury. I felt foolish for not knowing that it had been a baby tooth and embarrassed for my emotional state in front of another teacher. I was angry at the school for only having a nurse one day a week who would have been able to handle this situation despite the age of the tooth. I was even angrier at the district and a larger educational system that allowed a school to exist where a person like me, with virtually no teacher training, could be an asset and responsible for the lives and education of sixteen beautiful children.

When my emotional roller coaster ended I was tired. And by the time the class lined up to walk back inside I just felt sad. Sad because we never found the tooth and sad I couldn’t present Dominique with that little piece of her childhood, safely nestled on clean white cotton in a plastic treasure chest.